While it would appear at first blush to have been lost in translation, it seems both sides of the two solitudes claim Quebec Premier Jean Charest actually said “everyone comes out of this a winner” as a result of the student unrest inflicted upon his province.

How can this be so?

Surely those caught in the middle of the multitude of student riots in Montreal do not feel like winners, especially now that the tentative agreement is disintegrating.

Surely the businesses that had windows smashed, their merchandise looted and their delivery trucks set afire do not feel like winners.

But Premier Charest says they are.

What kind of message does this send?

That if civil disobedience does not work, ramp it up to violent criminal behaviour?

In an increasingly politically correct world, it is increasingly obvious that politicians are becoming less willing to do the correct thing.

This allows rule through unruliness to gain momentum, just as the word “strike” was bastardized to describe the students’ wild boycott of their post-secondary education.

For 80-plus days, for example, the Rest of Canada watched their nightly news as up to 180,000 Quebec university students took to the streets to protest a proposed tuition hike that, even when fully implemented in 2019, would still leave them paying arguably the lowest rates for post-secondary education in all of Canada.

And over what? Over $254 a year? Over what would surely be considerably less than this Entitlement Generation’s latte bill at Starbucks over the same period of time?

It would appear so.

According to the agreement, which would freeze any tuition hike until at least December, the Charest government would create a “provisional council” to determine if and how universities can cut their budgets.

But here’s the skinny that’s so laughable.

While the tuition fees may actually rise by a total of $1,778 over seven years – or $127 a semester – the money will most likely not come out of students’ pockets at all, but out of the budgets of the schools they attend.

In other words, the Charest government caved to thuggery, and even that may not work out.

The city of Montreal, meanwhile, was the venue for more than 200 protest marches, many of which were strategically aimed at causing the most disruption possible.

Bridges were blocked, as were ports, main roads and the Montreal subway system.

Smashed storefronts and torched cars were de rigueur.

And what about the young man who lost the use of an eye when the student demonstration turned ugly in Victoriaville, Que., leading to the arrest of

106 on charges of illegal assembly and participating in a riot?

Does he feel like a winner?

At least four Quebec coppers and seven demonstrators were injured in that Victoriaville fracas, as police finally turned to tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets to combat the protesters who were tossing cans, rocks and billiard balls.

That’s right, billiard balls. Not cheap, by the way.

A set of Super Aramith Pro-Cup balls, for example, which are made out of phenolic resin and used worldwide in virtually all official billiard tournaments, begin at $249.95.

Perhaps the rioters used pre-owned balls to play bop-a-cop.

Fifty bucks a set seems to be the average price online.

But who was getting the bad press?

The cops, of course, even though there are pictures showing a bunch of thugs putting the fists and the boots to a downed police officer.

After almost three months of unabated lawlessness and very little action by government, however, it took a non-stop 22 hours of negotiations for Charest’s Liberals to reach its tentative truce with students, and for him to then proclaim that “everyone comes out of this a winner.” By then, the French CBC had turned the three student organizers into rock stars – particularly 21-year-old history major, and No. 1 militant, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois – by pumping them up to maximum capacity on Radio-Canada’s prized talk show, Tout le monde en parle.

Yes, but wasn’t the sweet smell of victory intoxicating?

It was so sweet, in fact, that Charest immediately accused his main political opponent, Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois, of lacking the leadership qualities he apparently possesses to deal with such a crisis, and used this as an excuse not to call the election most Quebecers want.

It may be one of the first times in history, however, that the sweet smell of victory in Quebec had a somewhat fishy after-whiff.

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